This article describes the creation of a lightweight ontology of European Union (EU) criminal procedural rights in judicial cooperation. The ontology is intended to help legal practitioners understand the precise contextual meaning of terms as well as helping to inform the creation of a rule ontology of criminal procedural rights in judicial cooperation. In particular, we started from the problem that directives sometimes do not contain articles dedicated to definitions. This issue provided us with an opportunity to explore a phenomenon (...) typically neglected in the construction of domain-specific legal ontologies. Whether classical definitions are present or absent, laws and legal sources in general are typically peppered with a number of hidden definitions (in the sense that they are not clearly marked out as such) as well as incomplete definitions, which may nevertheless help legal practitioners (and legal reasoning systems) to reason on the basis of analogy or teleology. In this article we describe the theoretical basis for building an analogical lightweight ontology in the framework of an EU project called _CrossJustice_. We present our methodology for collecting the data, extracting the data fields and creating the ontology with WebProtégé, followed by our conclusions and ideas for future work. (shrink)

El diálogo problemático entre razón filosófica y razón artística se propone como el enclave de la discusión para hallar el fondo de la realidad y el ser en la verdad y la belleza. La filosofía ha de reconocer su momento estético en tanto que productivo y receptor, y el arte ha de reconocer su momento filosófico en tanto que interpretativo y contemplador. El camino de este reencuentro para un mutuo enriquecimiento entre el arte y la filosofía se da a través (...) de la reflexión sobre la forma en el marco de la teoría de la formatividad elaborada por Luigi Pareyson. La forma aparece ante el artista y ante el filósofo no solo como aquello que ha de plasmar por medio de lo sensible, sino también como aquello que le antecede en tanto que idea orgánica en sí mismo y en la realidad. La forma refulge la verdad para ser elaborada y reconocida, y resplandece en la belleza para ser realizada y contemplada. Así, en una síntesis de actividad y receptividad, poniendo en el centro a la persona humana como apertura, el arte y la filosofía trazaran los matices propios no clausurados ni definitivos, pero sí claros y delineados de la verdad y de la belleza en su relación con el ser y la experiencia que el hombre hace de este. (shrink)

El presente artículo resume los fundamentos de la teoría estética formulada por Luigi Pareyson. La materia y la forma constituyen la obra y en ellas se da una unión entre lo espiritual y lo material mostrando la esencia de lo bello-verdadero en la trascendencia. La percepción de los sentidos y la interacción materia-espíritu nos llevará a las fuentes de la experiencia estética en tanto que experiencia del ser. Arvo Pärt lo manifestará así en Berliner Messe y Cantus in memoriam (...) of Benjamin Britten. La forma abre la materia al espíritu y el espíritu abre el arte a la trascendencia. (shrink)

The influence of sediment oxygen heterogeneity, due to bioturbation, on diffusive oxygen flux was investigated. Laboratory experiments were carried out with 3 macrobenthic species presenting different bioturbation behaviour patterns: the polychaetes Nereis diversicolor and Nereis virens, both constructing ventilated galleries in the sediment column, and the gastropod Cyclope neritea, a burrowing species which does not build any structure. Oxygen two-dimensional distribution in sediments was quantified by means of the optical planar optode technique. Diffusive oxygen fluxes and a variability index were (...) calculated on the captured oxygen images. All species increased sediment oxygen heterogeneity compared to the controls without animals. This was particularly noticeable with the polychaetes because of the construction of more or less complex burrows. Integrated diffusive oxygen flux increased with oxygen heterogeneity due to the production of interface available for solute exchanges between overlying water and sediments. This work shows that sediment heterogeneity is an important feature of the control of oxygen exchanges at the sediment–water interface. (shrink)

Flaminia Pischedda Cet article s’intéresse à l’un des textes fondamentaux de la tradition du Classique des changements (Yijing 易經) : le Xici (Commentaire sur les sentences attachées), également connu sous le titre Grand commentaire (Dazhuan 大傳) au Classique des changements. Nous procédons à une analyse formelle du texte, afin d’explorer ses motifs argumentatifs et philosophiques. Sans ignorer la nature composite de ce texte, qui est faite de plusieurs couches superposées, notre analyse sera conduite autant dans le détail du texte (...) que dans ses articulations globales. Nous entendons éclairer la manière dont la structure du texte reflète son contenu. Ainsi, nous montrerons comment un ensemble d’éléments structurels et lexicaux font du Xici un texte élaborant et défendant ses propres arguments, sans qu'il lui soit besoin de recourir à des ressources extra-textuelles. (shrink)

Providing the first English translation of Análisis del ser del mexicano, this book features a full biography of Uranga, a detailed overview of the translated text, and discussion of Uranga's relevance to contemporary debates in the phenomenology of culture, the philosophy of liberation, Latin American philosophy and phenomenology itself. Reading Uranga's brilliant words expertly translated and introduced by Carlos Alberto Sánchez finally allows us to understand why this Mexican philosopher is considered one of the most fearless and original thinkers of (...) the 20th century. (shrink)

The topic of the present reflection is Christian religious belief. Specifically, we will use Husserlian tools in order to examine the positional nature of this particular type of belief. We will be less interested in the question concerning the success conditions of this experience and more in its noetic structure. According to our proposal, to believe by faith supposes (although it is not exhausted by) accepting the existence of mundane evidence speaking against this fundamental belief. The believer acknowledges the existence (...) of this contradicting en-doxical basis and nevertheless believes what she believes. We will refer to this simultaneous movement of accepting and cancelling as the concessive structure of the religious attitude. The para-doxical movement of experiencing conflicting evidence as being subjectively ineffective is a key component of this attitude. At least some inchoative conflict with the world is required in order for the religious belief to be religious. Lastly, we will try to show that, with a distinctive terminology, the idea that the Christian religious attitude involves a conflict between subjectivity and world is present not only in Kierkegaard but also in phenomenological figures like Scheler and even Husserl. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to bring together (at least) two very different debates: one on justice, mercy and particularity, the other on the play of exclusionary reasons. My aim is to show how the discussion of the uneasy co-existence of justice and mercy pivots on the question of particularity. And, secondly, that the debate on exclusionary reasons can show us why law may fail to do justice in this context.

Nel mio articolo propongo una lettura dei §§ 79-84 della Critica del Giudizio, parte della sezione Metodologia del Giudizio teleologico. Dapprima mi interrogo sul significato di una Methodenlehre del Giudizio teleologico, che rintraccio in un’attività metariflessiva del Giudizio; procedo poi ad una lettura analitica del testo nelle sue varie articolazioni, nella quale passo in rassegna le questioni attinenti alla specificità dello statuto epistemologico della teleologia, alla possibile convivenza tra finalismo e meccanicismo nella scienza della natura, all’origine della vita, allo scopo (...) ultimo della natura e allo scopo finale della creazione; approdo, infine, ad un’interpretazione per cui l’intera teleologia rationis humanae, che si estende dalla teleologia naturale alla teleologia morale passando per l’antropologia e per la filosofia della storia, viene in questa sezione riarticolata intorno ad un nuovo fulcro concettuale di livello trascendentale, che può garantire l’effettivo collegamento tra queste diverse parti della filosofia proprio perché esso non si esercita in forma di dominio legislativo, ma in forma di riflessione sul molteplice empirico e sulla causalità teleologica propria dell’uomo. (shrink)

The first part of this paper aims to highlight the analogies between Schutz’s vision of the natural attitude and Wittgenstein’s vision of a phenomenon that concerns the same problematic field, i.e. certainty, the belief of common sense that is free of all doubt, that the world “out there” is as it appears, absolutely real. These certainties form the basis, the foundation of language games and therefore of knowledge in general and in its entirety. This foundation is unfounded and yet indispensable. (...) The second part of the paper examines an important topic analysed by Wittgenstein, related to the aforementioned problem: the language transposition of pre-predicative, pre-reflective and non-propositional certainties, the cornerstones of which are “hinge propositions”, whose hybrid nature can be identified in the shift from empirical propositions to grammatical rules. (shrink)

What are the Early Memoranda?1 When were they written? What are their sources? What is their purpose and their relation to Hume's works? These questions, usually addressed separately, are in fact tightly interwoven: they require an articulated response that embraces them all. Our response could be summarised as follows: far from being current reading notes, or even less the exhaustive diary of Hume's intellectual experience, the Early Memoranda are most likely second-tier texts, or—as James Harris recently conjectured—"notes taken from notes."2 (...) More generally, the Memoranda, with some possible exceptions, are the result of a selection between those "loose bits of paper" and "uncorrect thoughts"3 which Hume began to... (shrink)

La decouverte de plus en plus profonde de la signification du christianisme a transforme la pensee de Fichte. Reciproquement, Fichte s'engage dans la voie d'une transformation du christianisme, au sens d'une metamorphose de la croyance en vision; il saisit la foi comme un stade imparfait de la science et souligne que seule cette derniere est a meme de supprimer l'exteriorite de l'Absolu. Le present ouvrage allie les points de vue genetique et systematique. De ses cinq parties, les quatre premieres exposent, (...) en suivant l'ordre chronologique, l'evolution de la theorie fichteenne du christianisme, depuis les textes prekantiens jusqu'a la Doctrine de l'Etat de 1813. La longue cinquieme partie, structuree thematiquement plutot que chronologiquement, est reservee non seulement a la reprise synthetique, mais aussi a la confrontation critique. Elle examine les differents aspects de la conception fichteenne du christianisme, notamment sa position a l'egard du Nouveau Testament, de la dogmatique, de la morale et de la mystique chretiennes. (shrink)

The act of iudicare hostes (‘declare public enemy’) was a formal pronouncement of the Roman Senate, voted for the first time in 88 BCE following a proposal by L. Cornelius Sulla after his first march on Rome. Legal historians have generally interpreted it as an emergency measure intended to preserve legality in a situation of civil strife and viewed it as a consistently defined institutional framework throughout the final decades of the Republic. Through an analysis of Sulla’s performative political communication, (...) before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the march, this paper argues that the act of judging (iudicare) someone a public enemy (hostis publicus) was first deployed as a political action, void of legal effects. Later instances of iudicare suggest that this act underwent a process of institutionalization after 63 BCE. (shrink)

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature—to some extent—but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial (...) in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved . In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that—whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences—the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists’ assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient. (shrink)

The point of view advocated, in the last ten years, by quantum probability about the foundations of quantum mechanics, is based on the investigation of the mathematical consequences of a deep and elementary idea developed by the founding fathers of quantum mechanics and accepted nowadays as a truism by most physicists, namely: one should be careful when applying the rules derived from the experience of macroscopic physics to experiments which are mutually incompatible in the sense of quantum mechanics.

The author, who shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics with Owen Chamberlain, offers impressions and recollections of the development of modern physics. Rather than a chronological approach, Segre emphasizes interesting, complex personalities who often appear only in footnotes. Readers will find that this book adds considerably to their understanding of science and includes compelling topics of current interest.

This article aims to present four case studies of the different responses to governmental measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic by supreme and constitutional courts, especially in cases of jurisdictions that have been facing democratic erosion. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic demanded immediate public policies and other political decisions from the branches of government. Executive authorities were the main actors in effecting constitutional public health norms. The expectation was that they will abide by the rule of law in fulfilling (...) their duties; that has not been the case under governments that promoted democratic erosion. The different contexts of the threats posed to the constitutional democracies led populist and illiberal leaders to opportunistically either try to—and then be contained by courts—or effectively consolidate the expansion of powers under the conditions of the pandemic. Concentrating on four jurisdictions (the USA, Hungary, El Salvador, and Brazil), the article demonstrates that courts can effectively work as bulwarks against waves of democratic erosion, especially in situations of stress, as it was the case in the global COVID-19 pandemic. This hypothesis is also proven by episodes in which courts did not sufficiently operate to curb illiberalism because they were already captured. The analyses enable classifying the court’s responses to the COVID-19 executive measures in a threefold pattern: deferential, restrictive, and of forced capitulation. (shrink)

Information entities are used in ontologies to represent engineering technical specifications, health records, pictures or librarian data about, e.g., narrative fictions, among others. The literature in applied ontology lacks a comparison of the state of the art, and foundational questions on the nature of information entities remain open for research. The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, to compare existing ontologies with both each other and theories proposed in philosophy, semiotics, librarianship, and literary studies in order to understand how (...) the ontologies conceive and model information entities. Second, to discuss some open research challenges that can lead to principled approaches for the treatment of information entities, possibly by getting into account the variety of information entity types found in the literature. (shrink)